Finish What We Started (9 page)

Still, she almost didn’t get on the plane. It was Clay who brought her to her senses during that momentary attack of guilt and damning self-reproach.

“Get on the plane,” Clay told her, and squeezed her in a supportive hug. “This is where you need to be. You’ve worked way too hard for some guy you barely know to ruin everything you’ve worked for.”

She sniffed her runny nose and nodded, clutching her big brother, until last call for her flight.

For seven hours over the Atlantic, she sought to justify Lee’s words. She couldn’t believe he meant those horrible things. He was hurting. His family was falling apart. She could come up with a hundred logical reasons to let him off the hook.

When she landed she called him before she even left the airport.

“Hi, it’s me,” she said, luggage piled around her. “Are you okay?”

“Where are you?” His voice was hard, wary, and oh so far away.

“I’m in the airport. In Scotland.”

“Then I have nothing to say to you.”

“Wait. Don’t hang up.”

“You did this. Remember that.” His words were as clipped as his tone.

She was not going to cry. He just had to be made to listen to reason. “I know you’re upset because everything is a mess right now. I want to help you.”

He snorted dismissively. “Right. Unless you’re calling to tell me you’re getting back on that plane and coming home, then this conversation is over.”

“Can you just listen to me for a minute? I love you.”

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you about that. I don’t abandon the people I love. I’m not that selfish.” And then he hung up on her.

Candace wiped her eyes. There were things to do. Pick up the luggage. Make it to her new room. Remember to eat. Start classes and bury herself in lab work. She had a plan for her life, and she would never deviate from it again.

Chapter Eleven

Present day

Candace thought they were going to find Jose, but when Lee turned the truck into the driveway of a magnificent home she assumed they were at a job site. Giant stone columns rose up, supporting three stories of walls full of windows looking out over an enormous front lawn. From the driveway, she was able to discern a stained glass dome over the entry.

“Wow,” she said, gazing out the window.

They continued around the side of the house where she was able to take in the sweeping back yard complete with an enormous swimming pool and pool house. Lee slowed the truck as the garage door opened and he pulled the big vehicle inside. He waited for the garage door to completely close before he gestured her to follow him.

Sunbeams bounced off granite countertops and stainless steel appliances in an immaculate kitchen. He tossed his keys by the sink. She gazed over the room in amazement. He didn’t pause, though, and she stayed on his heels as he continued on through a great room furnished with large leather furniture and a gigantic flat screen. Oddly, the next part of the house was unfurnished. She peeked into a dining room with no table and a formal living room with only a massive stone fireplace to fill it.

She gasped, then paused under the stained glass dome she’d seen from the outside. Fiery red swirls blended into oranges and yellows and blues. The entry was bathed in muted light.

“Wow,” she repeated. This place was amazing.

He didn’t reply and she took a few steps at a trot to catch up to him as he led the way up a giant curved staircase. Wood beneath her feet was polished to a high gleam. The entire second and third floors opened to the giant, circular entry and the banister and railing that circled each level was intricately styled wrought iron.

“This place is amazing,” she told Lee when she caught up to him on the second floor landing. “Who lives here?”

He tossed her a perplexed look over his shoulder. “I do.”

Her jaw dropped. “You do?” When she looked over the balcony to the open area below she saw the hardwood floor had been laid out in a subtle yet intricate design she hadn’t noticed from ground level. Amazing. “You live here?”

“Yeah. I told you I was taking you home to help me find the cat.”

She couldn’t believe this place. It was astounding. Magnificent. Lee made kissing noises as he paused at each door along the way and glanced in the rooms. She stuck her head in each one after he did, only to discover that each was bare except for the second one, which contained a cat carrier, litter box, and food and water bowls. There were so many questions, she didn’t even know where to start.

Not true. She fired off the first one that occurred to her. “Who else lives here?”

“Me and the cat.” He paused and peered into a bathroom. Made more kissing noises.

She blinked into the room. The walls were tiled with pebbles. She ran her fingers along the surface. Cool. “By yourselves? It seems a bit roomy just for you and one part-time feline.”

Lee shrugged as he disappeared through open double doors. “Mark lived here with me for a while until he got married.”

She hustled into the room to find a billiard table in the center and a long lacquered bar on the opposite end. So far it was the only room besides the kitchen and great room with any furniture. He peered behind club chairs. Apparently there was no cat, because he grunted in annoyance and led her to the next room.

“Every room on this floor is empty except that one.”

“Yep.”

She stared at his back in confusion. Normally Lee chattered away like he hated silence and now all of a sudden he was stoic? What was the deal with this house? Why in the world did a single man live alone in this mansion? How much money was he making these days? When she’d known him, he hadn’t been the kind to squander his money.

“Why?” she asked.

Again with the mysterious shoulder rose and fell. It wasn’t an answer; it was an evasion.

“No furniture is kinda weird,” she muttered under her breath.

“Yeah, well, that’s part of the reason I’m concerned I can’t find the cat. There aren’t that many places for him to hide.”

She was busy gawking over the balcony. “You’d be surprised about cats. You’ll lose a game of hide-and-seek with a cat every time.”

She followed him up to the third floor. Instead of a series of doors along the arc that lead to more empty rooms, this one opened up to a wide landing that led to one set of double doors. She followed with her mouth agape. The one wall was still windows, but it didn’t stop there. The glass turned up into an L and continued up the roof. Not only could she see the entire city, but a huge swath of sky. At periodic intervals drapes were pulled open and gathered in long columns of fabric that pooled on the floor. Lee disappeared to the left, but she didn’t move to follow him. The city view was breathtaking, even in the morning. What must this panorama look like at night with the twinkling lights of the city below?

“The last time I saw him was in here.” His voice came from deeper in the room.

She turned slowly, taking it all in. The third floor of the house seemed to be one giant master suite. A foyer to the right led to bathrooms. There appeared to be two—genius! Past the bathrooms she found the biggest closet she had ever seen.

Lee’s disembodied voice came from far away, so she back tracked until she found him. At the rear of the main room, through an arched passage, she took in the sleeping area of the suite. Another stone fireplace was tucked into a corner.

The only furniture in the room was a bed sitting on a raised platform. It faced the glass wall.

What a view to wake up to.

He had his head stuck under the bed, which left his very fine butt in the air. She forced herself to look away. No point in coveting something she couldn’t have.

“Is he under there?” Still, it was a mighty fine butt. Maybe a little coveting wasn’t totally without merit.

His head emerged. “No. Damn it, Jose. Where the hell are you?”

“So, this room has furniture.” Maybe if she kept pointing out the obvious he’d tell her what the deal was with this house.

“Well, a man’s gotta sleep somewhere.” He put his hands on his hips and scanned the room for previously unconsidered kitty hiding places. He tried snapping his fingers, but that didn’t produce a cat either.

“Yeah, but this is one hell of a nice
somewhere
.”

He brought his attention back to focus on her. “I actually just moved up here from the second floor. I finally found the bed I was looking for to fit the space.”

Fit the space? My God, you could have seven beds in here and still have room for a disco.

“It’s a nice bed,” she conceded. The suitable bed was a massive thing, light wood that matched the flooring with carvings on the headboard and footboard. It was beautiful yet completely masculine. There wasn’t much in the house, but what furnishings it had were beautiful. “Who’s doing the decorating?”

“I am.” He said. She detected a twinge of hurt feelings.

“Wow. I’m impressed.” Who’d have known? She’d never have guessed the Lee she had known had such style. “The place is gorgeous. How long have you lived here?”

He was pulling the drapes away from the wall to check for the cat. “Umm, going on four-and-a-half years, I guess. I spent the first year in a travel trailer until the construction was mostly finished. I did the rest while I lived downstairs.”

“Wait a minute. Are you telling me you built this house?” She looked around the suite again with new eyes. The flooring was golden teak. Who could afford that? She remembered amber travertine in the dual bathrooms. And that ceiling—outrageous.

He turned from his search with both hands on his hips. “Yep.”

She was aghast. “You designed it and everything?”

He raised his eyebrows and said, “Of course.”

She didn’t know if she had a right to be proud of him after the way things had ended, but she was anyway. She had known the man was amazing. Maybe it was a delayed reaction following his fine ass up the stairs and the excellent view of it only moments before, but she also recalled how good he was with his hands. Very good, indeed.

“This place is...God, I don’t even know, Lee. It’s amazing. Pays to own your own construction company, I guess.”

Lee glanced around the room as if seeing it through someone else’s eyes for the first time. “Yeah, it’s coming together pretty well.”

“Enough with the modesty already.” She gestured to the glass ceiling. “This is spectacular.”

“It is, right? Rather inspired if I do say so.” He relaxed a bit and his face lit up with his famous grin when he flopped on the bed. “Laying in bed and watching a thunderstorm is the coolest thing.”

“I’ll bet.” She couldn’t resist the silent invitation. She took the other side of the massive bed, then gazed up at the sky.

“Cool, right?” He turned his head and smiled at her.

Imagining lightning overhead and thunderheads and rain pounding on the clear ceiling kept her distracted from the nearness of the man next to her. “It would be amazing.”

They stared up at the expanse of blue for several silent moments. Thoughts raced through her mind like a pack of cyclists racing cross country, all disjointed but packed together to maximize confusion. Zip, zip, zip. She was glad to see he was doing so well. Could she tell him that? Surely this house must be for a family he was planning? The relationship with the mysterious woman who owned Jose must be serious, even though she hadn’t moved in yet. Candace was satisfied that he seemed happy. Whatever old feelings being near him had brought up were just residual ones. They didn’t mean anything. Besides, after the way things ended, there was no way in the world she would be willing to entertain anything besides the most basic friendship with him, even if she had been fantasizing about hot, meaningless sex.

Without looking at him next to her, she said, “I still hate how things ended, you know.”

He didn’t answer right away. The silence was unnerving. She tilted her head to the side just enough to look at him out of the corner of her eye.

She tried again. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

Her admission gave him the perfect invitation. “Yeah.” He turned to face her, then paused for a moment. “I’m sorry, too. I’m so ashamed of the horrible things I said. It makes me sick to remember. You didn’t deserve it, and I hope you know I didn’t really mean any of it.”

She sighed deeply and nodded. She tore her gaze away and stared up at the sky.

“I was so angry,” he said. And broken. And lost.

She looked so beautiful in his house, lying near him on his bed. How many times over the years had he had this fantasy? He told her one of his secrets then, in a voice just above a whisper. “That didn’t mean I didn’t think about you. I went to the airport when you left.” She turned back to face him. “Clay took you and you were crying, remember? For a couple of minutes I thought you wouldn’t go. I hoped you wouldn’t. But whatever Clay said did the trick and you disappeared into the crowd. I waited until the plane taxied away, but you didn’t get off.”

And then he went back to the wreck that was his life.

She blinked hard a couple of times and swallowed. He watched her throat and then her lips. He wanted to touch her, to smooth his finger down her cheek or maybe slide the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip. Maybe it was having his fantasy almost realized that made him temporarily insane.

Her forehead wrinkled. “But you never talked to me again. You wouldn’t let me explain or try to work things out. Nothing. You were brutal.”

He conceded her point. “I know.”

A real low point had come six months after she left. His friends, filled with ridiculous macho advice, had assured him he could fuck the girl out of his head. That was the ticket.

“Find another girl,” the plumber had suggested.

“One that looks like her,” his right fielder had said. “Find a hot blonde and nail her, man. You’ll see. Pussy’s all the same.”

No one looked like her. Still, the rapid fire advice had kept coming.

Those guys had been idiots. But as the night wore on, and he’d gotten drunker...

He’d been desperate and miserable and drunk as hell. The woman lived around the corner from the bar. He’d fucked her as instructed. And it had totally sucked. She was nothing like Candy and it had only made his ache worse.

He bent one arm behind his head and glanced at her. “I did call you.”

Candy gave a harsh laugh. “No, you drunk dialed me, what? Six months afterwards?”

Recalling the events now was humiliating. Not even sure what his conquest’s name had been, he’d staggered from her apartment afterward. All he could think of was Candy. How much he’d missed her. How much he loved her. He wasn’t even sure how he’d gotten her on the phone, but there he’d been, standing in the middle of the street at three in the morning, so drunk he’d needed to lean on a sign post while he waited for her to pick up.

“It was still a call. I’d hoped—”

“You were drunk and horny. What did you think was going to happen in the middle of the night, thousands of miles away?”

She started to get up but he reached over and grabbed her hand. “Don’t go. I’m trying to say I’m sorry now. I’ve always been sorry.”

Her expression was confused but she didn’t leave.

“Candy—” He stopped himself. “
Candace,
I’m sorry I hurt you.”

She closed her eyes for a long heartbeat before she said, “Okay.” There was a tentative smile. He squeezed her hand with just the slightest pressure.

His conscience felt better immediately. His ledger was clean.

“I was a freaking disaster there for a while.” He chuckled to lessen the truth.

“I know. God, I was miserable. I threw myself back into school. I didn’t come up for air for like three years.”

While she’d had school to occupy her, he’d had his family. After a while, though, Sarah took her life back and Sidney, resilient as only children can be, continued to grow into the amazing little person he was. That left Lee with a hell of a lot of time on his hands.

That’s when the real heartbreak had hit. Misery for his lost relationship had never been far away, but he could ignore it by ripping out Sarah’s bathroom to install a whole new handicap access shower or some other chore to make his sister’s life easier—or at least less horrible. Without all those tasks to take care of for other people, that gave him plenty of time to wallow.